A video clip released by Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) has revealed extra-judicial killings being conducted in Sri Lanka. Although You Tube subsequently removed the video for violating terms of use, you can View the video here

According to one estimate Rs. 150,000 Crore (US$ 30.9 bn) of taxpayers' money will flow out into the gargantuan task of making our lives similar to that of aquarium fish and no less secure. Imagine that kind of money and political will power going into healthcare and sanitation or basic education and poverty alleviation

We need not worry as much about the terrorists from abroad as the terrorists from above and the duped voters who repeatedly fall for political candidates pandering to this broadly malignant upper class. The latter bunch and their sycophantic legislative admirers, more than any foreign guerrillas, are leading the world's wealthiest nation into ever deeper ruin

Annually, two - three million Americans, including 1.3 million children, experience homelessness and many more are at risk. Most vulnerable are those losing jobs, homes, and the millions of low-income workers paying 50% or more of their income in rent so that a missed paycheck, health emergency, or unexpected financial burden makes them vulnerable to homelessness at a time government aid is being cut

The Australian Government has succeeded in passing legislation for Renewable Energy Target Scheme that was supported by the Libs with negotiated inclusion of coal seam-derived methane as a “renewable energy source”

After the incident of Sharukh Khan, we have had a slew of reports and opinion pieces that have held forth on how icons must be treated and are treated. Some ‘balanced' commentators have stated that it does not have to do with his being a Muslim and having a Muslim name. These could well be valid trains of thought. However, there is a more dire script lurking beneath. It has little to do with physical security and all to do with psychological security. One would have called it xenophobia, but here safety is sought on the basis of not necessarily what is foreign but what is ingrained

The inhabitants of the Bedouin village of Amra have good reason to fear that the harsh tactics used by the Israeli army against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been imported to their small corner of Israel’s Negev desert

It is not just the ‘loony’ ‘vernacular’ media, as many are given to believe, but even the ‘respectable’, ‘mainstream’, ‘national’ English-language press in India that have sedulously cultivated the notion of ‘Islamic terrorism,’ so much so that the image of Muslims in general being either terrorists or their sympathizers enjoys wide currency today. Yoginder Sikand examines the trend in the light of a report released by a team of secular, leftist non-Muslim activists from Karnataka

US special envoy Richard Holbrooke spent five days in Pakistan attempting to pressure Islamabad into staging a major military offensive in South Waziristan, which is considered a stronghold of the Taliban

There is every liklihood that when the Americans choose to leave, the Greater Pushtunistan movement may rear its head like never before. Neither the Taliban, nor the drug lords, nor even the powerful warlords, would be able to counter that storm. A large section of Pushtuns from both sides of the Durand Line, a much larger group than that supported the Taliban, could also join the fray. The irony, a tragic one as such, is that the longer the U.S. and NATO choose to stay in Afghanistan and goad Pakistan to “tame” the Pushtuns on the Pakistani side, the more closely consolidated a formidable a force the Pushtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan will become

The more we look at the fragility of money, then, it seems that the young survivalist with his army-manual reprints may not be living in a world so different from that of the wealthy pensioner who looks at oil depletion as a question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Those who put their faith in the money economy were lucky enough to start saving cash in easier times. For young people today, however, working at a job that provides any savings can be a grim struggle. The two generations need to have more sympathy for each other. We are all heading into the same wilderness

A national liberation movement cannot be expected to walk on crutches. The resistance movement has to learn to walk alone when there is no forthcoming international solidarity and until the time such solidarity is earned through relentless efforts. It is high time for the younger Kashmiri generation to take full charge of the political landscape and chart new paths of non-violent and creative resistance, which are not dependent on the signposts erected by Pakistan or any other State

Have we really become “We the sheeple,” or are we still human beings? The planet is dying under the thrall of a small minority of men who think of the rest of the human race as “cattle,” livestock for them to buy and sell

The health care debacle has gone exactly the way I pictured it would. It seems that every day that passes brings with it a new concession to the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and the health providers. It probably would have been a less painful experience if the government just would have asked these interests to build a health care plan with no governmental interference. There is no doubt in my mind that we would have gotten essentially the same plan

If you scratch at economic theory long enough, you discover it's little more than long strings of arcane mathematical formulae grounded in superstition (the Invisible Hand of the Market), platitudes (peaceful competition) and pipe dreams (eternal growth)

Civilization is dying. The very notion of civilization is dead. Money has taken over. Money has been the heir apparent for centuries and in the Empire’s frantic reaching out of its tentacles over the rest of the world, it has already managed to convert a majority of the Western world, and more, to the belief that the Free Market is the solution to global well-being

If only we become aware of these evil designs in Art and Literary forms, identify them and understand their layers of covert interpretations and connotations and raise against these, taking all necessary initiatives to expose and destroy them we would be able to save ourselves and our suffering brethren from the cruel and bitter cultural onslaught that has been going on from time immemorial. Only then we can emerge as an emancipated and liberated wholesome human race

These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies

In a speech delivered Monday to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) in Arizona, President Barack Obama promised to intensify the US military engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, wind down the war in Iraq, and create a new military that would be better-equipped to wage unconventional warfare

It's a full time occupation trying to unravel the reasons Americans remain in the dark. What seems ( to any intelligent outside observer ) like sheer stupidity and arrogance is in reality an almost inescapable indoctrination process that begins before you are born, and ends some time after your dead

In a little over 30 years the anti-racist, anti-war Labor Party of the Whitlam era has become a racist, pro-war, pro-coal, pro-pollution Apartheid Labor Party - Australia has reverted de jure and de facto to the Apartheid Australia of the bad old days when White Australia - together with US, UK and Apartheid Israel – supported Apartheid South Africa

The recently published Human Rights Watch report documents a range of human rights violations committed by police, including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and extrajudicial killings. It documents the failings of state police forces that operate outside the law, lack sufficient ethical and professional standards, are overstretched and outmatched by criminal elements, and unable to cope with increasing demands and public expectations

Howsoever, unsatisfactory the results of the implementation may be, the importance of reservations from the Dalit viewpoint cannot be overemphasized. As could be evidenced by the organized private sector, where it would be difficult to find a Dalit employee

The long delayed Fatah Congress, held in Bethlehem on August 4 has underscored the obvious: the all-encompassing movement which was meant to exact and safeguard Palestinian national rights has grown into a liability that, if anything, will continue to derail the Palestinian national project. This comes at a time when the Palestinian people are in urgent need of a collective response that is strong enough to withstand Israeli military pressure and coercion at home

When the world looks at the future of Palestine these days, the principal question is unfortunately "What will Obama do?" How far will he go in putting pressure on the new right-wing Israeli government, and how will they react? Yet, our "messiah complex" which credits politicians with being able to solve everything single-handedly allows the world to forget about the action that is going on on the ground inside Israel/Palestine by both Israelis and Palestinians against the occupation, and the struggles they encounter

Enacted on January 8, 2002, the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act's (NCLB) sponsors claimed it would close the achievement gap between inner city and rural schools and more affluent suburban ones by setting high reading and math standards, then testing to assure they're achieved. However, the law's real aim is to commodify public education, end government responsibility for it, and make it another business profit center

Sergeant Travis Bishop, with the US Army's 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, pled not guilty at a special court martial on Thursday to two counts of missing movement, disobeying a lawful order and going absent without leave (AWOL). Friday, in a trial full of theatrics from the jury, prosecution witnesses and the prosecution, he was found guilty on all counts

Hicks and colleagues report in the April 16, 2009 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine regarding civilian non-combatant deaths during the current Iraq War period (2003-2008) was seriously flawed

One BJP activist from Mumbai has filed a complaint (August 3rd 2009) against actor Emraan Hashmi accusing him of promoting communal enmity. Mahesh Bhatt who gave statement in support of Emran Hashmi also figures in the complaint. Emraan Hashmi had earlier approached state minorities commission that he has been discriminated against by the housing society, Nibhana in posh Pali hill locality of Mumbai. His complaint has been that he had already paid the advance of a lakh of rupees to the seller of the flat, but the housing society refused to give the no objection certificate on the ground that Hashmi is a Muslim

All in all, the crux of the argument submitted here is that Pasmanda Movement (PM) needs to grow beyond quota politics and rethink its abnegation of the social/cultural/economic aspects of the movement. Along with its present accent on democratisation of the state it would do well to also consider the more far-reaching issue of the democratisation of society at large. PM needs to engage in a balancing act between the political and social. This will create the much desired synergy necessary for launching the libratory promise of PM on track

The severe disturbance of the energy balance of the atmosphere ensuing from the emission of over 320 billion tonnes of carbon since 1750 threatens a shift in the state of the atmosphere/ocean system to ice free greenhouse Earth conditions

Indian Prime Minister Mammohan Singh launched a 3 billion dollar nuclear submarine. A submarine made at the cost of taking bread from the mouths and life from the chests of Prime Minister Singh’s fellow citizens. India is a gigantic torture chamber for the 47% of its children under five who suffer malnutrition

Soldiers are returning from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan destroyed mentally, spiritually, and psychologically, to a general population that is, mostly, willfully ignorant of the occupations and the soldiers participating in them. Troops face a Department of Veterans Affairs that is either unwilling or unable to help them with their physical and psychological wounds, and they are left to fend for themselves. It is a perfect storm of denial, neglect, violence, rage, suffering, and death

The heath-care debate is not about care at all. Instead, it's about the amount of profits that government, HMO and pharmaceutical leaders are personally willing to give up. Accordingly, it's clear that many Congressional representatives have no interest in evaluating even a few of the successful models of universal coverage that numerous other countries can provide. Instead, they are, typically, in collusion with big business to stymie any meaningful reforms

The once-solid North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) is starting to show its age. The 1994 trade agreement that laid the foundation for the economic/political integration of North America is encountering serious internal ruptures, threatening future “progress.”

Only a couple of months to Copenhagen and it's not looking hopeful. Real change must begin and be lead by the US and "( d)enial , mistrust and uncertainty are among the key psychological reasons that the American public is still resistant to serious action on climate change, according to psychologists"

US regulators closed another three banks last Friday: First State Bank and Community National Bank, based in Florida, and Oregon’s Community First Bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is expected to pay out $185 million to cover closure costs and insured deposits for the three institutions. A total of 72 US banks have collapsed so far this year, up from 25 in all of 2008 and three in 2007

When seen from a distance, kites in Gaza may look quite ordinary. But while Gazan children, in many respects, are just children, their kites are hardly ordinary. Often adorned by the red, black, green and white of the Palestinian flag, Gazan children's kites are expressions of defiance, hope and the longing for freedom

Last Sunday morning just before sunrise, Israeli forces evicted seventy more Palestinians from their homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which is being taken over by the Nahalat Shimon settlers

This past week, a former Blackwater employee (identified in the court papers as John Doe #2) and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company (identified as John Doe #1) have made some explosive accusations. In sworn statements filed in federal court in Virginia, the two men claimed that Erik Prince, the company’s owner, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company

For eight years, the Bush administration relentlessly targeted Muslim, environmental, and animal rights activists as national security or terrorist threats. Shamefully, Obama continues the same practice

Once, there were many billions of passenger pigeons in America. Now there are none. This might have been the most dramatic example of avicide. Today, the methods by which human activities kill birds are far more varied but no less deadly

For soldiers who have gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and then voluntarily turned themselves in or were forcibly returned, the detention conditions here in Echo Platoon only serve to reinforce the inescapability of their situation. They remain suspended in a legal limbo of forced uncertainty that can extend from several months to a year or more, while the military takes its time deciding their fate. Some of them, however, are offered a free pass out of this military half-life -- but only if they agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq

Eleven suspects of Malegaon blast, September 9, 2008, got a breather (August 01, 2009) when the special court dropped the charges under MCCOA against 11 suspects of the crime. Prosecution failed to show that all accused were member of a single organized crime syndicate

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 64 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years, all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited

In America's first war against Islam, we were the ones who introduced the use of suicide bombers. Indeed, the American seamen who perished in the incident were among the U.S. military's first missing in action

Two immigrants from the former Soviet Union staged a very public wedding in the streets of central Tel Aviv this week to highlight the plight of hundreds of thousands of Jews barred from lawfully marrying in Israel

The process must draw from the resolve of Kashmiris to struggle for justice and strengthen this resolve through principled alliance that breaks the isolation and despair that accompanies any people subjected to brutal mistreatment. The multiple legacies that inspire and haunt us must become the very sustenance that, through sharing, nurtures our struggle

Racism and corruption are entrenched in politically correct racist (PC racist) White Australia, a deeply racist country that is committed to war, occupation, mass murder and race-based discrimination but ignores the consequences of its actions and vehemently protests that it is not racist

For the past ten and a half years, Washington and Venezuelan oligarchs have targeted Chavez relentlessly and won't let up while he's in office. Whether the Honduran coup signals stepped up efforts ahead remains to be seen. Perhaps so given Washington's regional history of intolerance of democracies that place national interests above America's. Chavez explained it well saying Obama "risk(s) being killed if he challenges the American empire." So far, there's not a hint of it in sight

An article on the recent developments in Oaxaca, Mexico regarding the 2006 murder of U.S. journalist Brad Will and how it relates to Plan Mexico, the three-year, $1.4 billion mostly-military U.S. aid package

The Washington DC-Beirut based Sabra Shatila Foundation as well as American, European, and Lebanese co-sponsors, decided, as part of next month’s 27th Anniversary commemoration of the 1982 Massacre at Beirut’s Sabra Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, to clean nearby Ramlet el Baida Beach and develop a continuing program to keep it clean. As one of very few free Lebanese beaches, Ramlet el Baida is used daily by Palestinian refugees, poor Syrians, Lebanese, and the nearly enslaved foreign ‘guest’ workers from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Sudan, Bangladesh and other countries

Last saturday in the village of Korian, near Gojra town in Punjab Province of Pakistan , dozens of Christian homes were set alight and eight people were burnt to death after villagers received reports that the local Christians had desecrated the Holy Quran

The first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an "oil crunch" within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession

Are inoculations and coercive military intervention the best strategies that the U.S. leadership can muster in response to worries erupting after the initial H1N1 outbreak? No, the innovative Chinese "plan" proves otherwise

If Republican extremists want to challenge this president’s legitimacy, that's what impeachment is for. That demands evidence of criminal actions, not just an unsettling majority of Republicans polled who won’t confirm Obama as American-born. Fortunately, 60% of Americans stand by Obama, and this GOP fringe is in fact dividing conservatives, making its own rightwing cringe

If the 85 House Democrats who pledged their support for HR 676 (John Conyer’s single-payer healthcare bill) remain firm and declare they will not support Obamacare or any other health care Reform Act than HR 676 and drew a "line in the sand", then at least they would get a hell of a lot of press and the bill might actually stand a chance of passing. Unfortunately none of them have said "no" to Obamacare. Their moment of defiance was short-lived and mostly rhetorical

The Sri Lankan government continues to detain nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians despite growing anger inside the country, particularly among the Tamil minority. President Mahinda Rajapakse has ignored calls by international human rights agencies for the release of the detainees, who were incarcerated in the final stages of the civil war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

In a bid to staunch the flow of damaging evidence of war crimes committed during Israel’s winter assault on Gaza, the Israeli government has launched a campaign to clamp down on human rights groups, both in Israel and abroad

Having lost in the realm of ideas, those supporting capitalism must compensate by other means. Barack Obama is a very outspoken devotee of capitalism, and has shown by his coup in Honduras — and also the military build-up in Colombia — that he will go to any length to prop-up U.S. corporations and rich investors in the region

The following is an excerpt from Malignant Masculine Power: The Narcissistic Consciousness of Deceit, Exploitation, Domination, and Destruction that is Leading the World Toward Annihilation By Wanda M. Woodward

Jharkhand is witness of unending struggle for mineral resources as the state contains 40 percent of India’s precious minerals like Uranium, Mica, Bauxite, Granite, Gold, Silver, Graphite, Magnetite, Dolomite, Fireclay, Quartz, Fieldspar, Coal, Iron and Copper. 102 MoUs have been signed for establishing steel factories, power plants and mining industries with the estimated investment of Rs 4,67,240 crore, which require approximately 200,000 acres of land, which directly means the displacement of approximately 1 million people

A report issued late last month by the Human Rights Unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) sheds light on the rising number of innocent Afghan men, women and children who are being killed in order for the US and its allies to consolidate their neo-colonial occupation of the country

Uri Avnery's open letter to Dov Yermiya, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who recently wrote “ I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it.”

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor looks at what the arrest of African American scholar Henry Louis Gates--and the resulting uproar when he dared to protest that he was a victim of racial profiling--says about racism in the era of Barack Obama

Pediatricians nowadays see fewer kids with broken bones from climbing trees and more children with longer-lasting repetitive-stress injuries, which are related to playing video games and typing at keyboards. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, calls this “nature deficit disorder.”

The eminent members of the NHRC should have visited the dingy bylanes of Batla House and Jamia Nagar next to the Jamia Millia University in Delhi soon after the encounter: the white fear of the Special Cell of the Delhi Police was as visible as colour white, as cold and as cutting as ice, you could slash it with a knife and find its cold edges inside the skin and eyes. So intense was the fear

The rape and murder of two young women in Shopian, the acceptance by the NHRC probe of the Delhi Police version of the Batla House encounter, the killing of a PLA member in custody in Manipur as evidenced by the photos published in Tehelka, and the furore over the mention of Baluchistan in the India-Pakistan Joint Statement tells us something of India’s strategic culture. This article seeks insight into India’s security culture through a snap shot of these four occurrences over the recent past

Over the past two decades, unrest in Jammu and Kashmir has affected the valley people, especially the urban poor, either by displacing them from their livelihoods or leaving them without any. Their poverty levels are aggravating and seek an urgent but long-term solution

Having lifted the embargo just a little and let the Pastors for Peace Friendship Caravan through, President Obama needs to carry through on his promise of change by ending the U.S. embargo once and for all

Excellent report from eyewitness in Peshawar, detailing precisely the criminal negligence of both Pakistani and American governments in their transshipment of hazardous materiels (fuel, explosives and weaponry) through the narrow crowded back roads of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Not only is Pakistan forced to submit to American demands upon it, but the people of Pakistan are paid in the currency of suffering and death for their peaceful acceptance of these outrages

The emerging position of Obama on race does not seem as much focused on end solutions to our most challenging problems, but rather more on the process of how sustainable solutions may be found. Under Obama, then, race-related programs and policies would not be directed toward pre-determined ends, but rather reflect the consensus position derived from countless community conversations. The end for Obama, then, which utilizes magnificently his skills and identity, is to build the means by which people can come together and talk

What do you think of Obama’s reaction to the Gates incident? Who killed Michael Jackson? Why did Palin resign? Why are 90% of the large fish in the ocean gone? Which question doesn’t belong? California-based organizer, educator, activist-writer, and playwright Richard Oxman knows the answer

Yesterday, under the leadership of showman Vijay Mallya, the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) ratcheted up the pressure on the Indian government to help their members to avoid the consequence of unpaid bills and loans. They threatened a day's strike on 18 August and promised more of the same to come; in an attempt to browbeat the Indian government. If the FIA wins, it will be one more instance of 'privatisation of profits and socialization of costs'

Pakistan is mired by plethora of problems both internally and externally. However, the woes emanate more from inside than outside. However, the enormity of challenges should bring the point home that all stakeholders need to join their forces together in order to offset these challenges to our survival. The political forces need to show unanimity of views on matters involving national interest